A Free Syrian Army fighter speaks on radio as he travels in a vehicle in Al Qusayr February 27, 2012.

REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

QUSAIR, Syria (Reuters) – The computer engineer from Homs had hoped to work in Dubai after his military service. Make some money, marry his fiancee. Carve out a comfortable life in Syriaâ€™s slowly liberalizing economy.

His dreams and those of thousands of other young Syrians collapsed when the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, 46, broke out a year ago.

For one thing, the overstretched army prolonged his two-year military service beyond its July end-date, keeping him four more months before he deserted and made his way to Qusair, a town of 40,000 people, 12 km (seven miles) from the Lebanese border.

A husky, bearded man in his early 30s, he took the nom de guerre, Homsi, after his battered home city, and joined rebels fighting in the hills and fields for a â€œfree and dignified life.â€ But Homsi had no gun. For that he would have to wait.

â€œWe are in a poor revolution,â€ he said last week, standing by a crumbling mud brick wall in Qusair. â€œWe have to buy weapons with our own money … When we defected from Assadâ€™s army, some took their guns. But not all of us did.â€

Army deserters like Homsi form the backbone of the loosely organized Free Syrian Army, nominally led by officers based in Turkey from where they proclaimed its existence over the summer.

Syriaâ€™s protest movement was mostly peaceful at the outset, but Assadâ€™s relentlessly violent response prompted more Syrians to fight back, catapulting the FSA to prominence, despite its frailties in weaponry, logistics and command and control.

The fighters, and the thousands of Syrians supporting them, span a religious and ideological spectrum. Smugglers, teachers, engineers or farmers, some are secular, many more are pious and a few wear the long beards favored by radical Salafi Muslims.

Overwhelmingly, they are Sunni Muslim former conscripts in their 20s who deserted while on leave or during operations when, they said, they disobeyed orders to shoot unarmed demonstrators. Most are motivated primarily by grievances accumulated under decades of authoritarian rule. â€œWe only need freedom – no need to hide, no need for blood on the streets,â€ Homsi said.

Armed mostly with smuggled or stolen weapons, the fighters in and around Qusair have given residents some respite from Assadâ€™s ruthless â€œshabbihaâ€ (ghost) militias, and have forged routes to Lebanon to bring medicine in and take casualties out.

They benefit from local support and from the rugged border terrain where low concrete houses dot farmland and mountains.

But as a military outfit, they are far from formidable. Their light weapons and scarce ammunition cannot match the armyâ€™s tanks and artillery in battle. When Assadâ€™s forces shell Qusair, the fighters melt away into the fields.

Arming Rebels

The disparity in firepower has led to calls from some Gulf states and others to arm the rebels, as in Libya last year.

But Western powers have so far been wary of fuelling a conflict that could ignite broader strife in a region whose political struggles often take on an ethnic or sectarian color.

With his black Afghan-style tunic, baggy trousers and heavy beard, Abu Omar cuts the kind of figure who might set off alarm bells for Western governments calculating how much support to give Syrian insurgents trying to topple the secular Assad.

Peppering his speech with religious expressions, Abu Omar, from the Qusair area, says he fought U.S. forces in Afghanistanâ€™s Helmand province and then in Iraq before returning to battle Assad in his homeland.

â€œWe donâ€™t want support from the United States. Theyâ€™re our enemy,â€ Abu Omar said, a Kalashnikov rifle across his shoulder. â€œOnce we finish with Bashar, weâ€™ll go fight America,â€ he said, and then chuckled. â€œWeâ€™re kidding. Thatâ€™s a joke.â€

Like other fighters, Abu Omar denied that al Qaeda foreign militants, whose chief has urged Syrians to fight Assad, had joined the fray. â€œHave you seen them? They arenâ€™t here.â€

All the rebels encountered by Reuters in Qusair were Syrian, many of them local or from nearby Homs and some from cities as far away as Deir al-Zor in the east or Deraa in the south.

Sensitive to their portrayal by state media as â€œarmed terroristsâ€ and al Qaeda militants, many fighters deny the revolt has a sectarian aspect, accusing Assadâ€™s government or foreign powers of trying to exploit religious divisions.

â€œSalafis? What are these Salafis? Someone who prays? Plenty of people pray, but I donâ€™t know what Salafi means,â€ said a 24-year-old army defector nicknamed al-Hassan. â€œBashar al-Assadâ€™s regime taught us that Salafis love to kill. Thatâ€™s all.â€

He said Syrian officers are harassed or detained if they grow beards, pray frequently or are overtly pious. â€œIf you pray in the army, itâ€™s a huge problem,â€ Hassan added.

â€œThereâ€™s no one here who wants Islamic government … When Assad goes, we just want someone who fears God. Sunni, Alawite, Kurdish, Christian. One who fears God, rules us with justice and gives us our rights.â€

Some fighters explain the limited number of Christians and Alawites in FSA ranks by saying that rebels from those groups would be at greater risk of torture or death if captured.

â€œAll people from every religion know that the revolution is right,â€ said a former army lieutenant nicknamed Ibra. â€œBut as minorities, other than majority Sunnis, their situation doesnâ€™t allow them to be effective participants in the revolution.â€

FSA officers say they want to prevent Syria from sliding into civil war and their main aim is to protect civilians and provide as much aid as possible to residents of besieged areas.

One officer, nicknamed Abu Arab, appeared affronted when a journalist asked whether Salafis were among the rebels. â€œWhy is the West afraid of Salafis? Why is it afraid of Islam?â€ he demanded. â€œThis is a Muslim country.â€

The rebels were motivated solely by Assadâ€™s injustices, he said. â€œThe army here is attacking the country. Have you ever seen the U.S. army attack New York? The truth is clear, but the world is committed to falsehood when it comes to Syria.â€

OLD GRIEVANCES

Still, there is an undeniably religious vein running through the movement. Most of the Qusair fighters pray regularly. Many have grown beards, now they are free of secret police scrutiny.

One of the largest brigades in the area is called al-Farouq, a reference to an early Islamic leader who many Shiâ€™ites consider was against their cause. The name is sewn in gold letters into the camouflage jackets of some local fighters.

Some, like Abu Omar, are ostentatiously devout. â€œSalaam aleikum (peace be upon you)â€ one fighter with a heavy beard and no moustache greeted a Western journalist at a checkpoint. â€œYou must pray to God. God is greatest,â€ he smiled, pointing skyward.

And sectarian-tinged suspicion and bitterness is widespread. Fighters question visitors from Iraq and Lebanon about whether they are Sunni or Shiâ€™ite, and often relay rumors of atrocities carried out by â€œIranianâ€ militias against Syrian civilians.

Many were convinced that Shiâ€™ites from abroad had entered Syria to bolster a government perceived as favoring Alawites, an offshoot of Shiâ€™ite Islam, over Sunnis.

One Sunni army deserter from the Baba Amr district of Homs, devastated in a month-long siege, said an Alawite official had denied him a university teaching post, a decision he viewed as sectarian discrimination.

Smoking constantly, with dark circles under his eyes, the man insisted that in his hometown government rules meant that Sunni couples seeking marriage had to undergo a ceremony conducted by an Alawite.

â€œCan you imagine a Christian getting married by a Muslim?â€ he asked, flicking ash from his cigarette, as other fighters listened intently.

Some nearby villages, scatterings of unfinished concrete houses and shops, are mostly Christian, others mostly Alawite. Sunnis dominate Qusair itself, as they do in Syria as a whole.

The fighters prefer this rural terrain, where they can dart through trees and take cover in ditches from shelling and sniper fire, to the towns where troops man checkpoints on main roads.

Their hand-held radios, brought in from Lebanon, crackle constantly.

LOOSE CONTROL

Syriaâ€™s border with Lebanon may have become a combat zone, but it retains its natural beauty. Snow-capped mountain ranges run across the horizon. Sunlight pierces purple clouds. Shepherds shield their faces from a bitter wind with red-and-white kaffiya scarves.

To reach Qusair, the rebels must take a winding route down dirt and gravel roads, climbing over hills and cutting through cedar groves, olive fields and orchards to circumvent the security checkpoints ringing the town.

Crammed into battered minivans and pickup trucks alongside green wooden boxes of rifle cartridges and grenades, they stop often, checking for army activity or transferring ammunition to their comrades.

Men in camouflage jackets or, more often, leather jackets and other civilian clothes, squat under bridges or in small concrete shelters, rifles slung over their backs.

Rebels use whatever shelter they can find. In one town, the rebels took over an abandoned school, sleeping in the classrooms and piling ammunition against walls marked with graffiti.

Nominally commanded from Turkey by FSA leader Colonel Riad al-Asaad, the rebels around Qusair and nearby mountains, who number 2,000 by their own possibly exaggerated estimate, appear to operate autonomously for the most part.

They are divided into groups, one in charge of smuggling medicine in from Lebanon, another with taking wounded people the other way and a third with defending demonstrations from attack.